Dynamics
by With A Smile
Summary: He played the prince and she the damsel, but at the end of their fairytale, there will be no happy endings. Zack x Aeris.


**A/N:** Hello! Recently, I just said "screw it" to not watching Crisis Core cutscenes and I just watched all of 'em on YouTube. In both Japanese and English. So I recommend you know something about Zack and Aeris's interactions in CC if you want to follow this fic the best.

With that being said, there are Crisis Core spoilers within. They're not very major, but they're there nonetheless. Reader beware.

**Disclaimer:** FFVII is Squaresoft's.

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**Dynamics**

**Fact #1:** Aeris Gainsborough is a closet writer.

They weren't novels or works of literary art or ridiculously flowing poems with words like "idiosyncratic" or "diaphonic", but more like thoughts she jotted down when she had the second and paper for it. Nobody knew it, but she liked to keep a pad of paper nearby just so she could write as pleased, as thoughts occurred to her, as interesting observations presented themselves. She was the flower girl, not the writer, the girl who wore pink just as easily as her smile, not the melancholy face of the stereotypical literary artists. What she wrote wasn't worth publishing in a book, in her mind, but she wrote it anyways, not for anyone but herself. She wrote notations on small things like the initials she'd seen carved into the bottom of the slide in the playground, little reminders like to buy the book Elmyra had wanted as a gift for her or to scratch her initials and his into the bottom of the slide too like the idealistic teenager she was.

She liked the feel of the pen in her hand and the words on the paper, like she was some naive novelist with a love for life and a passion for beauty, like she had the money to afford to be lazing around and the friends to fall back on when that life crumbled around her.

But that was not her reality, and that was not to be her role.

**Fact #2: **Aeris hadn't planned to write the letters.

She hadn't known the extent of their relationship, anyways. Wasn't sending letters back and forth regularly a couple-like thing to do? But friends mailed each other too, didn't they? What were they, anyways? He was her best friend, to be sure. Her light, her smile, her laughter. He made her feel unlike anyone else, and it was oddly disconcerting to not be in charge of her emotions, to feel her stomach lurch involuntarily at the sound of his voice or her heart leap into her throat every time he brushed up against her. That sort of emotion didn't accompany friendship… did it? Relationships weren't her strong point, since her closest one before Elmyra had been with a test tube.

In the end, she let herself hang in the limbo somewhere between friendship and romance, never really reaching out for either and at the same time longing for both.

When Elmyra told her to start keeping a diary to help let out her feelings, that was when she started to write him. The idea of writing to absolute nothingness, to a flat book with crisp white pages that would just absorb her emotions silently felt uncomfortable to her. Why confide in something that wouldn't listen? That only made her feel lonelier, and dammit, she'd had enough of that.

So the logical explanation had been to write to a confidant, a close friend of hers, someone who had always listened and made the right comments at the right times and laughed with her when there was something amusing or dried her tears before she had even started crying, someone who would let her fall asleep on his shoulder and carry her home because he wanted to make sure she was safe at night, because he cared.

And thus the letters began.

They had started out innocently enough. She'd document minor events, like how many flowers she'd sold, or what little trinkets she'd bought that day. She'd shy away from writing what her heart wanted to say to the diary that didn't exist, because she didn't know how he'd take to her breaking down and spilling everything that had been held up by the dam inside of her.

She never mailed them, either. Even though some tiny modicum inside of her wanted him to read this, to contact him, to hear his voice (in person or in pen) again, the overwhelming insecurities inside of her held back from letting everything dump out. They piled up on her nightstand, day after day with letter after letter, written diligently in her neat cursive script, letters to somebody and nowhere.

**Fact #3:** Zack Fair made not only the best friend but the best diary possible.

She could just imagine him groaning in sympathy or cackling with laughter with each observation or thought she documented, in a way blank white sheets and the stiff smell of brand new paper never could. He was her confidant, even if he'd never know.

She didn't even realize it when things changed and her letters took a turn for the serious side, mentioning her troubles and private thoughts and things she had almost never even dared to admit to herself. It had been so easy just to open up to him that she had forgotten all her qualms about being so vulnerable with her emotions. It felt like her thoughts were being unglued from her brain and pasted onto the paper in long, stringy tendrils that became easier and easier to extract from her mind the more she wrote. It lifted the burden of the thoughts she'd been holding for so long. Words came as easily to her as breathing- she always had a thing to say to him.

The funny this was, she hadn't known how much he important he was going to be to her at all. The idea that someone who fell through the earth from the heavens above like some twisted form of an angel would change her life was laughable. But thank those very heavens that she had gotten to know him.

She had learned the opening up could hurt, but she still tried every time with every person she met because she hated, loathed the idea that she could be missing out on her next best friend or the person who would change her life the most just by not trying to be friendly or personable.

And truthfully, it only took one second to say "hello" to him, two seconds to learn his name, and three seconds for her life to be changed forever.

**Fact #4:** Mailing the letters certainly did come about unexpectedly.

She remembered the day astonishingly clearly (letter #66). She was making her way home from the slums and a flower-selling excursion. Privately, she thought that each flower sold was another victory for herself and him. Like their teamwork was bringing about this beauty and this spread of color and joy throughout the depressing slums. A vague tune she'd never heard before was running through her head, and the irresistible urge to hum along bubbled to the surface, making her feel inexplicably content.

The Turk helicopter outside of her house made the music die in her throat and her insides wilt with fear and half-boiled anger.

She dropped her flower basket by the front door and using all of her self-control, stopped herself from barging right in. Who knew what they could be at her door for? They could be here to capture her… again. Though they had never found out the location of her house, there apparently had been a revelation recently in the Turk department.

She turned her doorknob gingerly, loathing the way the door squeaked as she pushed it open. Every shadow hid a crouched figure, lying in wait for her. Her stairs lay beyond the kitchen, and every creaking tile seemed to spell death for her. The stairs were no better, an ascending trap of doom, laced with groaning steps and protesting floorboards.

Her upstairs looked the same as ever. Flowers in their vases, rug on the floor unruffled. It was as if the Turks hadn't even arrived, that their presence was just a whisper on the wind. But Aeris knew her house best, and the door to her room that lay ajar was an instant giveaway. Nobody left doors open in her house.

Shuffling across the rug in a soundless way that defied the aging floorboards underneath, Aeris reached forward, and steadying herself with a deep breath, gently pushed open her bedroom door.

A whirl was followed by a barely perceptible click as the safety catch on his weapon was released. She found herself staring down the barrel of Tseng's gun, his gaze cold and unwavering as he trained it on her.

She, however, hadn't missed what he had been rifling through the split second before his reflexes and catlike senses caught up with him and caused him to spin around and cock his gun at her.

"Tseng…" her exhalation somehow formed into a word, a soft gust of air that barely constituted as a noise, but loud enough in the oppressing silence that he caught it.

"Hmph." He gazed at her for a moment longer before holstering his gun and gathering up her letters, all sixty-six of them, from the nightstand in one swift movement, leaving it looking bare and naked with the absence of its protective blanket of inked-on paper.

"What do you think you're doing?" she demanded angrily, her voice rising with her indignation at the idea of him reading her private letters, of an intrusion on something so personal.

"I can get these to him," Tseng responded shortly, his voice clipped and professional and so out of place in the soft colors and rounded edges of her room. Her heart rate sped up at the mere thought of him finally seeing what she had addressed to him all those days ago. She glanced at Tseng, trying to pick up if he meant it or not, but his face remained expressionless, like every good Turk's face should be.

"Were you reading them?" she asked, her voice an alien rasp to herself, coming out harsh and cold from unfamiliar irate depths as she sidestepped his statement. His eyes glimmered strangely as he glanced briefly at the addressee on the envelope, something unknown igniting in their inky depths.

"Not at all. I was merely curious as to who had received the honor of your correspondence." There was a definite cool edge to his voice, a sharpness that she had grown to associate with Turks, but not always with Tseng. He folded his arms, eyeing her carefully. She knew that even with his weapon in its holster, he could whip it out in the span of a second and trying to do anything rash could result in a sorry end for her.

"What are you doing here?" her voice was quiet, but it shook slightly and her fists clenched unconsciously. This was _her_ space, _her_ home, what was Tseng _doing_ here? The Turks didn't know where she lived, even if they did pay special visits to the church.

"I had the hunch of where your house was located. I told the Turks I was going alone. Reno and Rude are at the church right now." Without waiting for an answer, he headed towards the door. He seemed disconcerted with the letters he clutched in his hands. She didn't miss his eyes darting back and forth towards the stack. He turned back at the last second, tucking the letters away inside of his coat, all sixty-six swallowed up by the thick black fabric of the jacket.

"Let us pretend this never happened, shall we? I will not be returning."

"Wait… Tseng." He paused. "Do you think… you could take the ones I write… later… to him?" it was a split second decision, but once the letters had vanished from her possession and she decided that they were making their way into the rightful hands, it was as if a burden had been lifted off of her shoulders, and she was standing taller and straighter and she wanted him to read her letters, she wanted him to know what was going on in her life and she wanted to know what was going on in his.

A pause as Tseng contemplated, the mysterious look flickering in his eyes once more. But he turned his head to face the door and his reply (though she couldn't see his face) was calm and collected, belying nothing of whatever was going on inside his mind.

"Certainly." And with that, Tseng swept down the stairs, and as quickly as he had come, he had gone.

**Fact #5:** Aeris Gainsborough has a twenty-fourth wish.

She actually had twenty-three written down on a sheet of paper underneath her pillow, so that maybe when she dreamed at night, the words on the list could seep into her brains and for a couple of hours in her subconscious, her dreams could become a half-reality. The whole point of the list was to make sure she and the people who mattered to her ended up happy in life. Like _Wish #2: To stop the pollution of Shinra_. It was one of her very first wishes and hopes and aspirations as a child with too-big dreams and a too-large heart, something that she knew could never be achieved in her lifetime, but still something she wished for with all of her heart. Or _Wish #7: To put a garden in every person's home,_ from when her passion for flowers and greenery and just life in general started, and when she realized how uncommon a thing yellow flowers and bright smiles were in the slums.

Her twenty-fourth wish was tacked on recently, during a fitful night where there was very little resting done. It was a bad night in general, plagued with nightmares and garish visions of why, _why_ it had been four years with nothing, no news, no signs whatsoever. So after blinking open tear-stained eyes for the eighth time that night, she had felt underneath her pillow, her fingers scrambling over themselves to find her list and her reassurance, and she had scrawled the addition down in the dark of the night.

There had only been twenty-three when he asked, because when he asked he had still been around.

And when he had asked her to write down all of her wishes, so he could remember, she had summed it all up for him, to make it simple.

The point of her wishes was to make for a happy existence.

And if all she did was spend more time with him, she would fall nothing short of just that.

**Fact #6:** Aeris Gainsborough is not a quitter.

There were eighty-nine letters to prove that. Eighty-nine times she wrote to a man who would never write back, a man who had charmed her and stolen her in every single way, a man who would never come home to the one person who wanted him to the most.

The one time she had caught Tseng coming by to pick up the letters, she had asked him for news of the SOLDIER. He had refused to respond, but she read the answer in his eyes and his voice.

He still had eighty-eight letters tucked away in a sealed-off box in his office, to mail to someone who would never open the box and read what she most needed him to hear.

After finishing her eighty-ninth letter and watching the helicopter retreat into nothing but a speck in the distance she uncapped her pen and thought about beginning her ninetieth letter. But something twinged inside of her and she shut her eyes, because ninety was fast approaching a hundred, and a hundred letters is a lot of letters to send with no response. So she shoved the paper underneath a pew to put off reaching such a high number of letters written with such a low number of replies and focused on tending to her flowers, like it was a normal day in a normal life (and normalcy was what she wanted, right?), only she shouldn't feel like crying into a shoulder that wasn't there on a normal day, should she?

Maybe some day he'd return with eighty-nine letters that he meant to give to her but was too busy to ever get around to mailing. Maybe someday he'd reappear at her doorstep with that lopsided smile and that twinkle in his eyes (blue like the sky above and the heaven that he'd fallen from). Maybe he'd come back for her soon, because she had the ninetieth letter that she wanted to give to him in person.

Maybe, maybe, maybe… she'd cling on to those maybes, because she would not give up. Ever.

She'd think of this and remind herself of it every night as she fell asleep with her hand underneath the pillow and her ninetieth letter and twenty-fourth wish stored somewhere dangerously close to her heart. She'd remind herself not to forget that she was no quitter.

But in the end, as the rain fell and something broke inside her as she stood in the flower field which he had fallen into _f-o-u-r y-e-a-r-s a-g-o_, she had not quit on him, and he had not quit on her.

Fate was just a twisted sort of thing.


End file.
